msjamgochian'sinfinitebooklist

A fresh and thought-provoking dystopian young adult novel set in the not-so-distant future where the scored are watched and rated 24/7. Scored masterfully addresses the rapidly disappearing middle class in America, the quiet evaporation of privacy, and what it means when we're always 'on.' Cory Doctorow eloquently sums it up in his Boing Boing review , "This book is the antidote to the pointless hand-wringing about Facebook, reality TV, and the PATRIOT Act, a chance to get out of the trite cul-de-sac where these conversations always end up, and to move into green pastures." Give this to fans of The Hunger Games and Marie Lu's Legend . The easy reading level makes it a superb EAL/ESL alternative to 1984 or Brave New World. Grade 7+

"Dead, and no one told me." Catherine Gehrig, horologist extraordinaire at the Swinburne Museum in London, arrives at her post one morning only to find that her lover of 13 years, married Matthew Tindall, Head Curator of Metals, has died. Her grief is illicit; their relationship had been a secret since it began. Eric Croft, or "Crafty Crofty," the head of her department, makes it clear that he knew all along about her affair with Matthew, and, out of kindness or simply wanting to keep the scandal under wraps, swiftly exiles Catherine to an out-of-the-way annexe and gives her 18 tea chests full of 19th-century clock parts that make up an automaton to assemble. Catherine is attempting to put the pieces back together, both in the studio and in her heart, when she finds a set of journals belonging to the original owner of the automaton, Henry Brandling, in one of the tea chests. She finds a fellow broken-heart in Henry, who has lost one child to illness, his wife to

A deliciously bleak story written in intricate poetic prose about one man's impact on the lives of the three people who think they love him: Ryan, a college student at Northwestern who has never met his father, Jay (and is exited to redefine himself by getting involved with him), Lucy, an intensely bored high school student who falls in love with her history teacher, George, and Miles, whose life is a series of unsuccessful searches for his schizophrenic brother, Hayden. AYR is about waking up and finding out that everything you thought you knew about your future, past, and present is incorrect, as when Lucy uncovers George's deception, "...the life she had been traveling toward - imagining herself into -- the ideas and expectations... this life had been erased. Like she stopped at a rest area on the way and the attendant said, you must be mistaken... a sense of sundering. It was the feeling you got when you woke up and everyone you loved was dead." You'll crin

A graphic biography of The Man in Black, from his cotton-farm beginnings to his peaceful end. Click here for Michel Faber's full review . Grade 8+

Although I took comfort in reading her work, and recognized myself in many of her vignettes, this is a book I would recommend for extroverts who think they are introverts, and for anyone with an introvert in their life (and that is just about everybody - we are 30% of the population). Click here for Ms. Cain's article on groupthink. Grade 9+

Sixteen-year-old Gaia Stone is following in her mother's footsteps: training as a midwife and providing the Enclave (a walled community unlike her own, with running water, electricity, and resources) with three infants each month, when her parents are kidnapped for harboring secrets and her world is turned upside down. Gaia decides to smuggle herself into the Enclave to save her family and finds out the ugly truth swimming just underneath the Enclave's pristine surface. An action-packed adventure with a strong, impulsive, and spirited heroine that fans of fantasy will fall in love with. Don't miss the sequel, Prized , and look for the final installment, Promised , in October. Check out Ms. O'Brien's wonderful wiki for teachers, , full of ancillary materials, here . Give it to fans of The Giver and Graceling. Grade 7+

Are you still an artist if you don't have an audience? In spare prose reminiscent of Joan Didion, Dana Spiotta tells the story of Nik and Denise Worth, aging siblings who grew up during the 1970s-80s in Los Angeles and were involved in the art scene, Nik as a member of up-and-coming local band the Fakes and Denise as an actress. When singer-songwriter Nik's break-out deal with a big label turned sour in the 1980s, he turned inward, and began writing the "Chronicles," or the documented fantasy life of a successful musician complete with fabricated album reviews. Although she have up acting decades earlier, Denise's life isn't completely meaningless. She has a daughter she loves and a guy she gets together with every couple of weeks, but ultimately her existence is streaked with regret and painful self- awareness that she "had strayed from an acceptable course, that our lives were going in the wrong direction: I actually thought those words, how far we h

I have been eyeballing this book for several years, and finally read it in one gloriously long afternoon sitting, coffee by my side. Lydia Millet combines all of my favorites: a loveable borderline autistic loner (okay, not everyone will find him loveable - as a kid he makes money protecting the bullied), absurd hilarity presiding over grief, a strong supporting cast of societal misfits, and a wicked dose of black humour, all pulled together in a tidy little knot of human decline. T is working as a real estate developer and living in Los Angeles when his mother shows up to tell him his father has disappeared, throwing a wrench into the clockwork of T's ordered yet comfortable existence. His mother's untimely arrival coincides with the beginnings of his first real love relationship, and results in a series of tragic losses (sorry, no spoilers). T takes solace in studying rare and vanishing species at the zoo, breaking in at night to privately observe the last of their kind wh

Maybe I shouldn't have read this in a depressed post-Avengers-viewing mood, but Ultimatum made me long for the golden era of Jeph Loeb when he worked with Tim Sale on Batman. Chock full of full splash pages and our favorite superheros dropping like flies, what Ultimatum is ultimately missing is even a spider's web of a plot thread. Read Sweet Tooth instead. Grade 8+

Quindlen shares "wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about the perfection trap, the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free." This is the perfect graduation present for that overachieving young person in your life. Pair it with Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet for balance. Grade 8+

A neat little book with a gorgeous cover that brings the ocean to life from the author of Swimming to Antarctica . Distance swimmer Lynne Cox spent an entire morning swimming alongside a baby gray whale that she encountered during a practice swim in the Pacific, in the hopes that his mother would return for him and save his life. This is their story. A good gift book for swimmers, especially girls who love the ocean. Grade 9+